It goes without saying that unauthorized immigrants live in constant fear of deportation. After all, any chance encounter with U.S. immigration officials can leave an unauthorized immigrant behind bars and in removal proceedings. Less obvious, perhaps, is the impact that deportations have on families and communities. A mother can be left to provide for the family alone when the father is deported. U.S.-born children can wind up in foster care when their parents are deported. And the more frequently such deportations occur, the greater is the pall of fear which hangs over entire immigrant communities.

Such is the central finding of a report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), entitled How Today’s Immigration Enforcement Policies Impact Children, Families, and Communities: A View from the Ground. The report was written by Joanna Dreby, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Albany, State University of New York. Based on her field work in central New Jersey and northeast Ohio, Dreby argues that “deportations break families up and have a wider effect on the community as a whole—not just the individual and the family involved.”

Among the report’s principal findings:

Deportations leave many U.S.-citizen children with unauthorized parents in foster care, “often for no other reason than the undocumented status of a parent,” at a cost of nearly $26,000 per year for each child.

Deportations “create a large number of single mothers struggling to make ends meet” after the deportations of their husbands.

“Children and their parents live in constant fear of separation” because they know deportations are occurring and fear that they could be next.

“Because of fears of deportation, children routinely conflate the police with immigration officials…These children—who are U.S. citizens—grow up afraid of the police.”

The report argues that “only comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to earned legalization for unauthorized immigrants can grant security to parents and children in mixed-status families.” After all, “a total of 16.6 million people currently live in mixed-status families—with at least one unauthorized immigrant—and a third of U.S. citizen children of immigrants live in mixed-status families.” Anything less than a comprehensive solution to this problem will leave millions of immigrant families subject to the devastating impact of deportations.

Nevertheless, the report goes on to say that there are some smaller-scale legislative fixes that would ameliorate the situation. In addition, President Obama could, through executive action, “allow parents, especially those supporting U.S. citizen children, to stay in the country if they have committed no crimes and are only guilty of the civil offense of being in the country without status.”

The federal government now deports nearly 400,000 immigrants each year, creating a humanitarian disaster in which families are destroyed and communities torn apart. As the CAP report shows so well, this suffering is pointless and can be ended—if Congress and the White House can find the political will to do so.

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Love2watch

It is very very sad because this is so true. My family were also a victim of these inhumane and draconian laws of the United States. My familes are torn apart at the moment. My husband and child was in the US and I cannot return to america because I am not allowed until I exhausted the 10 year bar. While I was reading this column I cannot help myself but to cry because we are suffering as a family. My only child was unable to finished College because she cannot afford it. I hope someone at the highter authority will do something about this laws. What God unites let no man set them apart, and this is what exactly the government did to the mixed status families.

Not only children miss their parents, but the other way as well.. Young and older, like myself 31 i am living alone in a country now. Missing my family. My soul is crushed and the missing of my “home” feels like a hole inside me.

Andrea

this is so true the fact thet you and your parents are separated from the rest of your family is something so devastating beyond a common human beings understanding. no one can relate to this unless you have gone trought it yourself. It is something so hard the fact that you have to adapt to a new way of living and its hard to start of of nothing with no one to help you out. Im 16 and my parents were deported 5 years ago now im living in the US with the rest of my brothers and this is something so hard that impact our lives and its so hard to get trough. I really hope a change come soon and i hope my family reunites soon.